Trudy Wade and the politics of spite
Published July 7, 2017
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, reprinted by Burlington Times-News, July 7, 2017.
In the dead of night, the General Assembly voted to send Guilford County down the path into darkness.
The legislature passed a bill Wednesday, just before midnight, that, if signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper, would allow the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to take public notices out of newspapers and off newspapers’ websites. Instead, the county’s website would be the repository for notices about such things as government contracts, public meetings, rezoning proposals, foreclosures and unclaimed property.
Sen. Trudy Wade (R-Guilford) was the force behind this. She sponsored Senate Bill 343, which would create a four-county pilot program that included Guilford.
That bill passed the Senate but never gained support in the House. But Wade wouldn’t let go. The proposal for a pilot program was attached to another bill, HB 205, which was added to and removed from the House calendar four times between Tuesday and Wednesday. The bill ended up in conference on Wednesday evening, and Wade agreed to remove three counties from the pilot program, leaving only Guilford County.
At 11:47 on Wednesday night, the House passed the measure by a vote of 60-53.
So Wade finally got what she wanted. Some Greensboro Democrats who serve in the House said Wade’s aim was to exact revenge on the News & Record because she is angry about stories and editorials the paper has written, including coverage of SB 36, which would have reshaped Greensboro City Council elections. Wade pushed that bill through the legislature in 2015, only to see it declared unconstitutional in the courts earlier this year.
If Gov. Roy Cooper signs this bill and the commissioners pass an ordinance to move notices to its website, it will do damage to the News & Record. The newspaper receives money to run legal advertisements, but it is not a large percentage of our revenue as some members of the House claimed.
The bill will do much more damage to Guilford County’s citizens and to other newspapers, such as the Jamestown News, which may go out of business because of the bill, the Carolina Peacemaker and the High Point Enterprise.
They also intimated this was a move to make it free to access these notices online. Although a pay wall at greensboro.com limits non-subscribers to 12 article views per month, the public notices are in front of that pay wall and free to all.
Further, Wade’s bill also makes for a less transparent government. The commissioners now could control the process of notifying the public. As public watchdogs, newspapers and their websites are the logical place for such notices.
Finally, logistical questions about how the county would handle public notices have not been addressed. Those include how the county will track the notices, collect payments and make sure they are posted correctly. The bill includes no details about standards for placement, archive requirements or a plan to provide independent verification. The notices must be unalterable for legal purposes, a key reason to keep them in newspapers.
When Forsyth County still was included in the proposed, four-county pilot program, its clerk of court told House members she wasn’t prepared to take on those roles and that she would need to add to her staff. It’s clear that this is a bill aimed not at improving public access to information but at hurting the newspaper industry. We urge Gov. Cooper to veto HB 205.
— News & Record of Greensboro
